Disposable absorbent articles, such as diapers, are well known in the art. Disposable absorbent articles retain and absorb body exudates, such as urine and fetal material deposited thereon.
Significant advances have been made in the art relative to absorbing and retaining urine deposits. For example, disposable absorbent articles seldom leak and may be relatively thin due to the incorporation of absorbent gelling materials.
However, fewer attempts have been made in the art to handle deposits of fecal material in disposable absorbent articles. Fetal material has the undesirable proclivity of smearing onto the wearer's skin, causing epidermal irritation and complicating the task of cleaning the wearer when the soiled diaper or other disposable absorbent article is removed.
To overcome this proclivity, certain attempts have been made in the art to isolate the fecal material from the skin of the wearer. Such attempts generally provide a void or hole into which the fecal material is deposited and retained (hopefully), so that the location of the fecal material is limited to the position of the void or hole. Examples of such attempts are found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,662,877 issued May 5, 1987, to Williams; U.S. Pat. No. 4,892,536 issued Jan. 9, 1990, to DesMarais et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,968,312 issued Nov. 6, 1990, to Khan; U.S. Pat. No. 4,990,147 issued Feb. 5, 1991, to Freeland; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,062,840 issued Nov. 5, 1991, to Holt et al.
Yet other attempts in the art sought to impose an upstanding partition to limit the fecal material to a particular position within the diaper. However, the prior art failed to recognize that the differences between the bodies of the male and female wearers imposed different limitations on the effectiveness of the upstanding barriers found in the prior art. The male wearer presents a relatively smooth body surface at the transverse partition. However, the female wearer presents labial tissue, and secondarily leg creases, which do not seal the top of the partition. When the partition is not sealed, fecal material can more easily cross the partition. The prior art simply does not account for these creases which are more pronounced in the body of the female wearer, and crudely allowed fecal material to cross the partition. Fecal material crossing the upstanding partition increases the caretaker's task of cleaning the wearer. Illustrative of such attempts are U.S. Pat. No. 4,895,568 issued Jan. 23, 1990 to Enloe.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide a disposable absorbent article having a transverse partition, which limits the migration of fecal material within the disposable absorbent article. It is further an object of this invention to provide a disposable absorbent article having such a partition which conforms to the anatomy of the female wearer. Finally, it is an object of this invention to provide a disposable absorbent article having a transverse partition with regions of differing stiffnesses and elevations.